The Maliki government may find the Sons of Iraq disagreeable, but the heroic volunteers still feature prominently in MNF-I news releases, like this one, dramatically titled “Sons of Iraq find weapons cache in southwestern Baghdad, EOD diffuses IED”.

If you really want to know when the U.S. withdraws its support — and that day will come, despite all the assurances by Petraeus of not “walking away” from the SoI — check out these dispatches. They’re a fun read.

For the past six years, military relations between the United States and Afghanistan have been governed by a two-page ‘diplomatic note’ giving U.S. forces virtual carte blanche to conduct operations as they see fit.

Although President Bush pledged in a 2005 declaration signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to ‘develop appropriate arrangements and agreements’ formally spelling out the terms of the U.S. troop presence and other bilateral ties, no such agreements were drawn up.

But after a U.S.-led airstrike last week that United Nations and Afghan officials have said killed up to 90 civilians — most of them children — Karzai has publicly called for a review of all foreign forces in Afghanistan and a formal ‘status of forces agreement,’ along the lines of an accord being negotiated between the United States and Iraq.

U.S. officials quoted by the Post say an agreement has never been attempted because “there are just a lot of moving parts” — in layman’s terms, because the Karzai government hasn’t gotten its shit together. One might ask, though, whether this is reason enough not to hold American forces — and ISAF, too, for that matter — accountable for their mistakes. Just because a country is bankrupt and its government corrupt doesn’t mean it can be bombed with impunity — right?

Here’s another sign that the Bush Administration has come a long way since the heady days of secret renditions and “enhanced” interrogation techniques:

The United States military has secretly handed over more than 200 militants to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries, nearly all in the past two years, as part of an effort to reduce the burden of detaining and interrogating foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to American military officials.

However:

[…] The prisoners can block their transfers to home countries, military officials say. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross interview all detainees before they are returned to their home countries, Bernard Barrett, a Red Cross spokesman, said.

In short, the U.S. has reverted back to the kind of renditions the Clinton Administration approved — without much public outcry — in the late 90s. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the new system, on the face of it, sounds more humane.

It is obvious where this road might end. The last time tens of thousands of armed Sunni men were humiliated in Iraq — by disbanding the Baath Party and Iraqi army in May 2003 — an insurgency began, costing thousands of U.S. lives and throwing Iraq into chaos. Yet Maliki and his advisors risk provoking Iraq’s Sunni community into another round of violence.

What if that battle is joined, but the ‘former Awakenings’ (‘the once and future insurgency?’) choose not to turn those guns against their American ‘friends’ but concentrate exclusively on the Iraqi government. Which side does the U.S. support? The Awakenings movement which it has built and cultivated, or the Iraqi government which it has built and cultivated? Could get messy.

“We’re not going to walk away from them, and as I said, Prime Minister Maliki committed to taking care of them. […] I do think it is somewhat understandable that the government struggles to hire former insurgents for its security forces or for its ministerial positions… But this is how you end these kinds of conflicts. That’s why they call it reconciliation. It’s not done with one’s friends, it’s done with former enemies.”

Paying off your enemy is always a huge gamble, particularly when you’re fighting someone else’s war. Whatever happens, the least likely outcome is probably the one Maliki is banking on: that the Sunni volunteers will quietly accept their fate, throw down their weapons and slink back to irrelevance.

I’m surprised at the fervour, particularly from the American left, with which the 2003 Biden-Gelb plan for Iraq’s “soft-partitioning” is being attacked. Reading recent blog posts you’d think Biden and Gelb concocted some mad-cap scheme that had no relation to reality. In fact, the plan — envisioning separate enclaves for the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shia — not only makes sense but may end up being a blueprint for Iraq’s future regardless of what the U.S. and Maliki want. At the very least it would warrant a more serious discussion.

In case you’ve forgotten what the plan was all about and how it was received, here are some useful links: